


in somnia

by CostcoOfYourDreams



Series: the meaning of love [2]
Category: AI: The Somnium Files (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Post-Mizuki Route, Slight Alternate Universe, Spoilers, aka where boss didn't tell mizuki about aiba, date's there for a hot second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-15
Updated: 2019-10-15
Packaged: 2020-12-16 13:28:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21036989
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CostcoOfYourDreams/pseuds/CostcoOfYourDreams
Summary: In another universe, Boss never told Mizuki about Aiba. This leads to some awkward late-night encounters.





	in somnia

**Author's Note:**

> There are referenced spoilers for Mizuki's route, so if you haven't gotten that far please be aware!

Mizuki wakes up late one night, Date snoring loudly on the sofa. Despite his snores, there are the sounds of dishes moving in the kitchen, not loudly, but just loud enough for Mizuki to know that someone is there. Her eyes shoot open, but she stays perfectly still. Whoever is there is making an awful lot of noise for an intruder, which means they are confident. And if they are confident, then they are probably armed. 

The noise is not loud-- it is a gentle sound, and it reminds Mizuki of what it must be like to come home to a mother cooking dinner. It nearly takes her breath away. No one is banging pots and pans together, but it feels unbearably loud in the silent stillness of the morning. The soft ‘clink’ing of plates. The sound of something bubbling. A stew being stirred. It is exactly what Mizuki imagines a home to be. 

For a second, Mizuki forgets what is happening, and her view of the ceiling blurs momentarily. She remembers though, a split second later, that this is not a heartwarming scene that she has woken up to. There is someone in her and Date’s apartment, and they are not going to get away easily. Not if Mizuki has something to say about it.

There is a metal pipe hidden to the side of her bed, so Mizuki reaches down as slowly as she can manage, inching her hand to the pipe, then pulling it back up at the same rate. The pipe hits the wall once, and the sounds stop, though the water continues to bubble. Mizuki holds perfectly still, eyes squeezed shut. She opens one eye after the sound of plates moving has resumed. Her heart sounds like a drum, Mizuki thinks, as she stares at the ceiling with a single eye. Is this what it is like for Date all of the time?

There’s no time to be wasted on wondering how Date lives-- he does not matter right now. All that matters is getting the intruder out. Mizuki has lifted the pipe so that it now sits by her side. She can not see them, but she is sure that her knuckles are white from gripping it so hard. 

Mizuki takes a deep breath, and springs up from off of the mattress, rushing into the kitchen area. She holds the pipe like a bat, scanning the area for the intruder. It is strange-- the pot is boiling, like she thought, and there are bowls and spoons on the table. It is weirdly domestic. 

Then she sees it. The creature is small, about the same size as a phone-- which is a weird thing to compare it to, but Mizuki does not have any other frame of reference. Its body is a translucent material that outlines the form of a hamster, or something similar. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about it is what is inside the material-- a single, unblinking eye with what looks like a spine-- or nerves? Mizuki does not have time to ponder the finer points of the creature’s anatomy, as when she sees it, she screams and swings.

Date shoots up in bed, his right eye half-lidded, though it widens when turns his head to see Mizuki just barely miss the creature. Mizuki runs to his side, holding her pipe like a baseball bat, eyes firmly fixed on the strange creature. 

“Date!” Mizuki cries out. 

“Hold on, Mizuki,” Date says, voice weary as he slowly climbs off of the sofa. He is moving way too slow for someone who just saw his roommate swing a pipe at a monster that is cooking food in their apartment. 

“_Date!” _she hisses at him. 

“What?” he asks as he stretches. He  _ knows _ there’s a monster in their home, and he is not doing anything. Mizuki stares at him in quiet astonishment, though, she thinks, she should not have expected anything else. It is Date, after all. 

Once he is finished stretching he turns to the creature. His eyebrows furrow, and his one open eye looks distinctly frustrated. 

“Aiba,” he says calmly with an underlying hardness, “what the  _ fuck _ are you doing?”

“Date!” the creature exclaims. “You can not use such language around Mizuki if you want her to not use such obscenities. It is very careless.”

“Oh,  _ I’m _ careless? Who’s making-- why are you making stew at four in the morning?” 

“You have been slacking on your promise to take her out for stew.”

“So you decided to-- what, just make it?” Date sounds incredulous, but not afraid. The ease with which he argues with the creature is what prompts Mizuki to lower her pipe. If Date-- knows the thing somehow, then it must be safe to have around.

“Date?” Mizuki prompts.

“Hm? Oh yeah, uh, Mizuki, this is Aiba. She’s a pain to have around--”  
“If you do not wish that movie you watched the other night to become reality, I suggest you refrain from saying such things.” 

“What,  _ Terminator _ ?” Date groans. “Whatever. Like I said, Aiba’s a pain to have around, but she’s my partner. Granted, she’s my annoying, know-it-all, pain in my ass partner, but she’s still my partner.”

“Partner?” Mizuki questions. 

“Yeah, we work together. She helps on cases.” It is hard to imagine how something like Aiba helps Date on cases, but then again, Date goes into people’s minds to investigate, so perhaps it is not that far-fetched. There is one thing that Mizuki would like to know, other than the glaringly obvious question of what Aiba is.

“How did she get in here?” 

Date immediately looks away from Mizuki and scratches the back of his neck. “Well, there’s something I haven’t told you.”

“Oh, besides the fact that you work with--” Mizuki gestures at Aiba, “--her?” The venom in her voice is familiar, and it grounds her.

“Well, you see--”

“I am Date’s left eye.” 

“Don’t just interrupt me!”

“You should get to the point faster.”

“Well you should--”

“So you’re always with Date?” Mizuki interrupts. As fun as it is to watch the two bicker back and forth, Mizuki has questions that need to be answered. Date nods. “So Aiba has known me as long as you have?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s really inconsiderate of you, Date.”

“Yes, Date, it is quite inconsiderate of you,” Aiba agrees. She has moved from her place by the stove to the table. Mizuki fights her instinct to flinch when she sees Aiba move. 

“How is that inconsiderate?” 

“She’s known me as long as you have and has never gotten to speak to me,” Mizuki says. 

Date averts his eye and says nothing. Aiba, despite having nothing but a single unblinking eye--  _ Date’s  _ eye-- to show emotion, looks incredibly smug. There is a long silence, then Date says, “It’s way too early to be dealing with you.”

Mizuki kicks him in the shin. 

“_Ow_!” Date shouts, hopping on one leg and holding his injured one with his arms. “What was that for?”  
“It’s what you deserve,” Aiba says, clearly amused. 

Date rolls his eye and cranes his neck back to stare at the ceiling. “Four A.M. Way too early. I’m going to sleep; Mizuki, Aiba, do whatever you want, just-- clean up when you’re done.” And with that, Date flops onto the couch which squeaks, unprepared for Date’s full body weight. 

“Date--!”

“Snore,” he says. “Snore.” Mizuki contemplates hitting him with her pipe, but concludes that giving him a concussion is not worth the brief feeling of accomplishment. 

“It is no use reasoning with him when he is like this,” Aiba says, sitting on the top of the couch. Noticing this, Mizuki’s grip on the pipe tightens. She forces herself to relax.

Mizuki frowns. “Doesn’t mean I don’t want to punch him.” Date inhales sharply, then goes back to his false slumber. Mizuki frowns. Why would Date hide Aiba from her for so long? After everything they have gone through, Mizuki thought-- no, it doesn’t matter, Mizuki tells herself as she shakes her head, it doesn’t matter what she thought. Reality is--

“Is something the matter, Mizuki?” 

“Oh, um, no, just thinking,” she says. Now without Date as a buffer it feels much harder to talk to Aiba, but it’s not like she did that much talking earlier. 

“I see. Would you like to join me at the kitchen table? It should be easier to talk there.” Mizuki nods, putting her pipe down on her bed before joining Aiba. She may be-- not scared, she is never scared-- uncertain maybe, but it would be rude to be armed while talking. Aiba must know the damage she can wreak with a pipe.

Aiba stands on the table, waiting patiently for Mizuki to join her. For such a small creature, she moves fast. 

“I am sorry we had to meet this way. It was neither my nor Date’s intention for us to meet so… unexpectedly.”

“It’s okay. I’m glad we got to meet at all.” She pauses, realizing Date’s faux snores have turned into actual sounds of sleeping. There is something Mizuki needs to say, need Aiba to know, but she can not force the words out. They get stuck at the back of her throat whenever she tries to say them. Aiba watches patiently as Mizuki opens her mouth once, twice, but never says anything. 

“I understand if… it is difficult to be around me. To you, I am a stranger.”

“That’s not it!” Mizuki exclaims, even though it kind of is. “I just-- you saw everything. Like when Date wouldn’t wake up and when I-- thought he wouldn’t ever wake up. You were there for all of that…”

“Actually,” Aiba says, “I was not. I was-- incapacitated at the time. If you’ll remember, when So,” Aiba pauses, as if considering her words, “hurt Date, he aimed for his left eye. That was me. During Date’s time in the hospital, Pewter was creating a new body for me.”

“Oh,” Mizuki says, then flushes. “Sorry.” 

“It is no problem. In fact, it is quite nice to be talking to someone who is not Date, Pewter, or Boss. It is refreshing.” 

“I’m glad, but how did you come back if you were destroyed when So…”

“All the information I have is uploaded to a storage cloud regularly. When I was destroyed, Pewter used the backups saved in the cloud to bring me back.”

“So you’re like a computer?”

“I am a computer. Date did not explain me very well, did he?” Mizuki shakes her head, staring raptly at Aiba who has remained in the same spot since they started talking. “I am an artificial intelligence designed to assist ABIS with investigations. My technical name is AI-Ball, for obvious reasons.” 

Mizuki pulls a face. “That’s really direct.”

“It is. Unfortunately I was not given a say about what my name was. I would have chosen something so much better. Like PSaiCLOPS, perhaps.”

“Like the myth?” 

“I did not know you knew about Greek mythology. Did you learn about that at school?” 

“No, Date told me about it a while back. He’s really into that stuff.” 

“Perhaps if he remembered the law as well as he remembers various mythologies, he would stop getting ABIS into trouble all the time.”

Something occurs to Mizuki. “You have all of Date’s embarrassing stories, don’t you!”

“I do,” Aiba says, and if she could be smiling Mizuki is sure she would be. Mizuki smiles back, but is cut off by a yawn. Mizuki puts a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. Aiba is right in front of her, sitting on her table mat, much closer than she was previously. Despite this, Mizuki does not start. “Perhaps it is best that you go to bed now. It is important that you get at least seven to eight hours of sleep, though more would be preferred. You are still growing, after all.”

Mizuki yawns again, and speaking through her yawn says, “I’m not tired.” 

“I can tell when you are lying.”

“But what about your stew?” 

“It is not finished yet, but it will be ready when you wake up.” 

“Stew for breakfast…” The thought makes Mizuki salivate. “I bet--” she yawns, “it’ll be really good, Aiba.”

“It is not necessarily meant for breakfast, but I assure you it will be good. But please, sleep.” Mizuki thinks about arguing more, but Aiba seems determined. 

“Okay,” Mizuki acquiesces. “And you’ll be there in the morning?”

“Of course.”

“Okay.” She stands and makes her way to her bed, moving her pipe back down the side of the wall. She falls face first onto the bed, stays that way for a minute, then maneuvers herself so that she is in a position in which she can sleep. “Goodnight Aiba.” 

“Goodnight Mizuki.” 

Just before Mizuki falls asleep, she feels a weight on her bed of something small, but solid. The weight settles just by her chest, close, but not touching, and she smiles into her pillow. She may not have a mother or father, not anymore, but she has Date, and now Aiba. Aiba may have surprised her, and Date may be a perverted old man, but they are hers. 

Mizuki lays a hand next to Aiba, and drifts away into unconsciousness. 

**Author's Note:**

> hello! i haven't written in a while, but i just recently finished ai and wanted to write something for it. the quality of this may be uhhhhh below what i want, but honestly this was just for fun! i hope you enjoy it, and i may be doing some more ai fics in the future!
> 
> if you liked it, reviews are greatly appreciated.


End file.
